ONE of Crossgar’s most iconic buildings has been saved from ruin and restored to its early 19th century glory.
The Market House started life serving the newly laid out market square in Crossgar and, after a chequered history which saw it lying derelict in recent years, is now a modern child care facility.
Originally built in 1829 at a cost of £30, it contained a weighing room on the ground floor, with the upper level used for storing grain. The weekly market in Crossgar came to an end after 1890 and in 1900 the upper floor was converted to a school. In the mid to late 20th century the building served as a church hall and had various uses until the it fell into disrepair this century.
Kit Williamson, owner of Friends Day Nurseries, hopes 20 jobs will ultimately be created and life brought back to The Square, which has been blighted by vandalism in recent years.
Indeed, she found herself running out of time to save the abandoned listed building and had to proceed with work before heritage funding became available in order to prevent its total ruin.
“I have always admired this building when I was driving past taking my children to Cedar school but it had never come up on the market before,” she said. “People told me they were afraid it was so derelict it would be a big financial pit. Whenever we began restoring it, however, the beams and the internal ceilings were in perfect condition.
“We had to get started, however, before any heritage funding could be approved. Vandals were taking the spindles from the stairs and throwing them on their fires. There were two fires in two weekends and as I had just bought the building I had to get going before it was burnt to the ground.”
Despite the lack of funding, however, the former nurse and nursing teacher, had strict restoration criteria to observe.
Apart from the addition of two stud walls and an extension where the original coal shed was onto the floor above, the building is largely as it was. And despite fears of a “big catastrophe”, the work, all carried out by local tradesmen, started at the beginning of June and was completed by September.
Thick white stone walls and restored original windows now merge with the colourful scenes from a modern nursery. The once open semicircle entrances at the front of the building, where the animals would have been led through, are still clearly visible and the hook for weighing the turkeys is even kept hanging from one of the beams.
Original fireplaces are intact in the downstairs accounting room, now the entrance hall, as well as on the top floor of what was once a long school room running the length of the building.
“It is a very small fireplace for the length of the room,” observed Kit. “There wouldn’t have been much heat from it.
“US soldiers also built separate stairs up to the school room when they stayed here during the war.”
As well as operating as a school at the turn of the 20th century, Kit says she has since discovered the Market House was also used as a cinema and a place for boxing matches.
“Apparently a big fight broke out here one night at the cinema,” said Kit, who has also found a, likely unconnected, bullet hole in one of the beams.
“The Wildlife Trust had it in the 1980s and people in their forties remember it as a youth club.”
Kit, who has for many years run a nursery in Saintfield, said one of the most important features for local residents and historians has been the installation of a clock back on to the front of the Market House.
However, despite efforts to save the original clock itself, it couldn’t be done and instead it was used to commission a replica from a specialist clock maker.
“Jim Ferris, a local historian, has been in touch and I also received a letter from a man called James McCormick, who is in his 80s, who said he would like to see round the building if we were having an open day,” she said. “He used to wind up the clock here for over 20 years.
“The clock was seen as important for the town and everybody who has spoken to us about it says they are happy to see it going again.”